"Breeding-back" aims to restore or immitate extinct animals by selective breeding. This blog provides general information, the facts behind myths and news from various projects.

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Two videos of Heck/Taurus cattle that might be of interest

While browsing youtube for interesting aurochs-related videos, I stumbled across a very short video of the small Taurus herd at Kleiberg (Lippeaue), which I covered here already. Not only is the bull quite cool, but what is really interesting is that this herd has two(?) Sayaguesa x Chianina cows, which you see in the video:

At 0:04 you see both the cows. They certainly will grow large and are long-legged slender, the small horns are not surprising. Their colour is very light, possible due to the Dun dilution of Chianina. I expect them to grow large, have an aurochs-like and swift body and also a good skull, the horns and colour probably will not be impressing but that's what is to be suspected in this combination and can be corrected in the next generations. With cows (and bulls) like these I hope that an aurochs-like bull with the size of 170 cm at the withers will finally be achieved, which would be the first one in breeding back in general.

The second video shows a herd of Heck cattle with a nice portray of their social behaviour - but you have to understand german for this video.

At first, the herd looks like normal Heck cattle with a very meagre resemblance to the aurochs. But you'll see a number of cows with aurochs-like large horns, and based on their looks I'd guess they are from either the Hellabrunn, Neanderthal or Wörth/Steinberg lineage, or perhaps a mix of those. One cow even has quite inwards-facing horns (f.e. 9:26), which is very rare in un-crossed Hecks.

2 comments:

My name is jeff and i follow your blog regularly. i found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9IuN8u8Erg which i thought might interrest you. I think they are cattle of Stichting Taurus and are in the Netherlands either at Keent or at Kempen-Broek. maybe it can be of use to you in this blog. cheers, jeff

About this blog

This blog is on everything related to the so-called “breeding-back” of extinct animals: From the extinct animals themselves, over their often domestic descendants and dedomestication to news and facts about various breeding-back projects, reports and photos from my own breeding-back related trips. I try to have a balanced and fact-based approach to this subject and to dismantle many of the popular myths. Enjoy!

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About me

I am an Austrian student of biology/zoology at the University of Vienna. My major interest always have been extinct animals, from dinosaurs to Pleistocene megafauna and more recent extinctions. Besides that I am interested in evolution, genetics and ecology.
I am also an amateur animal artist, making drawings and models mostly of extinct animals.